What Went Wrong? - Cube World

Cube World had a lot of promise and gained a lot of hype, but unfortunately with developers going missing and a Steam release that nobody expected, this game flopped hard and fast.

What happened to Cube World? That's what we're having a look into today. Cube World is one of those games that took the world by storm, yet struggled through an 8 year cycle that ended with a lot of annoyed customers.

Edit: There's also a game called Veloren that is very similar to this. I'll keep an eye out for Veloren as it's free to play and seems to be made as a sign of hope for all the cube world fans. Veloren may just be the game that everyone wanted.

Relevant links:

[WickedWiz]

Turns out this game has some signs of it still being worked on. It was pointed out to me that in the Cube World discord there is a post confirming this. So, I can't really say it's abandoned just yet. Big error in the video which I hope this comment can clear up a little.

[Why_It]

Passion projects that get abandoned aren't uncommon. This was just one of the rare cases where the project became popular enough to get a following.

[Meisterling]

When it comes to video games, I can't think of anything that hurts my soul as much as this.

[Somesomewhere]

just the fact that this game looks pretty good, that it run smooth like butter shows you that this guy is a pretty competent and passionate game dev. the fact that there were only two people behind it is pretty amazing. really hope the guy is ok and that this didnt discourage him for the future .

[NoStereo]

I bought the game back in 2013 and adored it. Wollay being a perfectionist was a blessing but ultimately a curse. The alpha that came out of nowhere was nearly perfect to me. It was fun, I even made a song for it since it didn't have bgm lol. I loved running around and exploring, battling and leveling up. All it needed were some feature updates making the leveling more fun, more biomes, and quests would have been cool too. The game had building systems so you could make your own weapons so naturally... what if wollay added a settlement feature?

There were these promises, and while we ocassionally got updates on progress, we got nothing hands on. Wollay was such a perfectionist he never released an update until completely remaking the game. But it wasn't the game I bought; it wasn't the game I had fun playing.

Wollay's mental illness stopped him from realizing he had something great, and all the fans just wanted more of what was already there. The worst thing about perfectionism and depression, is no matter if you create a masterpiece, you think it's ugly and have to tear it down to try again.

I'm sorry for wollay, I hate that a vocal and cruel minority were able to tear him down. I'm sorry for all the other fans. I haven't gone back to the game yet... I knew that mods were being made but the disappointment was too much at launch. One day when people mod it to hopefully be how it should have been I will get back to it. Until then tho... I saved the alpha I downloaded 9 years ago. Last good version :/


Looking at the pinned comment... hopefully it is gonna be fixed and updated. I don't have much hope lol. Being a fan of this game from day one really got me jaded.

[TheBlazingak]

Dude just needed an actual team. Think about it; he clearly can’t handle the pressure and his best efforts combined with much needed breaks created impossible hype and unavoidable resentment. This isn’t no man’s sky, his fans clearly loved the game already

[PTMG]

When "constant DDoS attacks" was immediately followed by "he just vanished for months"
I knew exactly what this guy was feeling.
Who wouldn't quit in that situation?

[SomeGuy-trhi]

This might be the first Cube World video I’ve seen that actually started off somewhat positive towards the original concept, and not just immediately accusing it of stealing from a certain other voxel game.

[TheMstermind]

The DDos attacks are absolutely incomprehensible. I can actually not think of any motive for them.

[ebolachanislove]

What kills me is there was probably an almost perfect version of cube world that only ever existed on wollay's computer before he decided to kill the game's progression. Imagine being able to play the dev version of the game directly before he made that choice.

[Roadwarior]

I feel bad for this guy, he’s clearly not greedy, lazy or stupid like many project leads featured in web-series like this. I just hope that the modding community surrounding the game is able to pique enough interest for him to still get some income for him and his wife’s hard work.

[DeeGeeG]

Being an artist who's kind of a perfectionist myself I think I know what happened here. He probably got burnt out. And sometimes you'll rework a whole project just to fix something earlier in the project. What I've learned about perfectionism is sometimes you've just gotta realize you're not going to make it any better. With my work I'd get to a point where I want it to be better but idk how and end up making it worse.

[uncle_vega]

As a teenager I really wanted this game to be huge. It had a lot of promise.

[legendori]

Imagine if Wollay just had a really bad internet connection and all his tweets that he made in 2019 were just being processed all the way from 2015

[error_]

This whole thing is sad because it's a self feeding cycle. Developer feels that people won't like the game, he stops communicating to perfect the game, people find the changes jarring and don't like them, and the cycle repeats.

[Crazakun]

I remember NerdCubed playing this so many years ago and thinking, "Once this game is fully released, I am totally gonna buy it!" As someone who just couldn't get into Minecraft, this actually seemed like a really fun alternative.

[misaroorasim]

Don't have much interest in the game, but I hope Wollay is ok. He's obviously very talented and intelligent and even wrote the game engine himself

[Fanaticalight]

I enjoyed Cube World alpha more than anything, and to be honest, I felt a little let down with the release because of the progression system changes. That's really what deterred me from playing Cube World until the first couple community mods started coming out. I feel like if there was a system that allowed you to have old progression vs. new progression, I would imagine a lot of the negativity and backlash from the community could've been avoided. Though, if I ignore the progression and new leveling up system, it's a damn solid game and I can see myself playing for months without getting bored.

Though, I can't help but feel bad for Wol_lay. I consider perfectionism to be that of a plague, and I experience it myself way more than I care to admit. What started as a passion project, gained a large following, which probably overwhelmed Wol_lay and put pressure to keep updated with people who're interested in the game around the world. At the same time, if the DDoS attacks were enough to break a piece of the heart on the inside, I cannot imagine what all the negativity is causing to him now.

[Seffyzero]

Criticism is very difficult to accept when you're working on a project dear to you. I believe Wol_lay when he said the reason he disappears is because of the anxiety these negative interactions caused him. I think he would've been better off if he had someone act as an intermediary, like a social media manager, and been more open about everything he was doing with the game. BUT at the same time, I think it's easy for me looking in on him to be critical and "logical" when it's not me who this all is affecting, and it so easy to plan for things that have already happened. I don't think Wol_lay did anything wrong, I think things just fell apart because he was gaining a lot of attention very fast for something he probably didn't think anyone but he and his wife would care about.

[ghguyrur]

Just so everyone knows, months later he really was outside my house like he said and is a man of his word